The Great Recyclables Escape

Princeton blogger and Planet contributor Steve Hiltner wrote a post today about all those recyclables blowing in the wind. His post at Princeton Primer is a recycling show and tell of sorts. He took pictures of the paper and cans littering lawns and streets to illustrate what that wind did today.

His post begs the question, should Princeton and other towns in Mercer County have better containers for recyclables, heavier ones with wheels and lids like some municipalities have? What would we do with the existing yellow and green recycling cans though? Are the cans recyclable?

Ours are more than a dozen years old, two are cracked and the handles are broken off. Should Princeton get new cans or should we just accept that the occasional windy blast will spread those newspapers and soda cans all over the place?

A man passing through our neighborhood on his way to work pitched in, picking up debris and garbage cans along the way. Unfortunately the wind kept blowing and more paper and plastic were scattered, especially when Central Jersey Waste dumped the contents of cans in to their trucks.

The last I knew, you could take broken cans for replacement (or get additional recycle cans) at the firehouse on Harrison St near Nassau. You can also pay them $2 per lid for recycling lids. We have 4 decent bins and 4 lids which we weight down with a brick each (they would blow off in wind, otherwise) and so our bins are well-behaved in high wind. None of our neighbors seem to know about the replacements and lids, however, and their recycling blows all over the neighborhood.